A judge from Fort Myers passed away before facing impeachment proceedings concerning his decision to release a convicted plane hijacker from Immigration and Custody Enforcement custody. Sources spoke with Claire Galt, an anchor with WINK News, revealing that Senior U.S. District Judge John E. Steele died. Strangely, the circumstances surrounding his passing have not, as of this writing, been revealed.
The news of Steele’s sudden death came just a few hours after U.S. Rep. Greg Steube announced that articles of impeachment were filed against the judge. The impeachment resolution accuses Steele of abusing his authority after ordering that ICE agents release Maikel Guerra Morales from their custody. Morales is a Cuban national.
Morales was convicted of aircraft piracy after federal prosecutors revealed that he assisted in the hijacking of a commuter plane in Cuba back in 2003. Morales forced the pilot to fly the aircraft to Key West, Florida. The suspect’s reason for the crime was to try reaching the United States. Not long after being captured, he was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison.
According to a report from WINK News, after finishing his prison sentence, ICE took Morales into custody and tried to boot him from the country. Judge Steele wrote in a ruling from July 8 that ICE detained Guerra Morales after he was let out of prison. The agency had already started the removal proceedings to deport Morales when the judge deferred his deportation due to a Convention Against Torture (CAT) claim.
In order to qualify for a CAT claim, a migrant must be able to demonstrate that they will likely be tortured or even killed should they return to their country of origin. ICE then released Guerra Morales in 2023 under an order of supervision, according to Steele. ICE later arrested Guerra Morales in December 2025 with the intention of deporting him to Mexico. Steele claims he complied with the terms of his supervision.
Steele then found that ICE held Morales for over six months without a plan to deport him, which he says violates a Supreme Court ruling from 2001. The judge wrote in his decision that ICE failed to provide evidence that it communicated with Mexico concerning Morales. Steele then ordered Morales be released from ICE under federal supervision.
The judge then states that ICE could re-detain Morales if deportation is reasonably foreseeable. “[ICE] have had more than three years since Guerra Morales’s order of removal-and more than six months since his present detention-to remove him from the United States,” Steele went on to say. “[they] are still unable to articulate a specific plan for his removal to Cuba, Mexico, or another country.”
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Steube later stated that the ruling from Steele placed the public at risk. “This is exactly the kind of activist judicial overreach the American people are sick of,” Steube went on to explain in a statement. “ICE had a convicted aircraft pirate in custody while pursuing his removal, and Judge Steele ordered him released within 24 hours despite obvious public safety concerns.”
“This activist judge forced ICE to release a criminal illegal alien who was convicted and sentenced to 22 years for hijacking a plane back into American communities,” Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said in a statement of her own. Steele served as a federal judge in the Middle District of Florida for 36 years and was appointed by former President Bill Clinton.
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